Names for Battlesites, Villages, Cities (Norman / French naming)

In yesterday's post, I explored some (random) names for English (and Anglo-Celtic) locations. The main bit of feedback I received was the need to do this kind of job for other cultures and backgrounds. I completely agree with this. But the main issue is that as I move further away from Anglo-Celtic backgrounds, the less familiar I become with the terminology and the rules.  That said, I'm going to give French and Norman names a go today.

The rules of French are a little different. Not only do nouns possess gender (unlike English), but the ordering of the noun / adjective can in some cases be the reverse of what it is in English (but not always in place names).  This makes creating a random table somewhat harder.  For example, should a place be preceded with "Le" or "La" (the French for "The") can be a tough determination to make. Nontheless, I thought I'd give this a good bash. Moreover, due to the first point, there are common elements in both the first two tables (example: Ville- and -ville; this can be both the start and the end of a name!) - hence one needs to keep an eye on this so as not to generate "Villeville" as a name!

As with the previous post, generate two "elements" from the charts below and run them together. The added caveat is that some characters may need to be subtracted (or added) to make them run together better and sound more authentic.  I've not included prefixes (Le, La), or suffixes (-sur-Mer) here, as my French knowledge is not that extensive, but one could glean several examples by looking at google maps. Here's the charts.

Element One	Element Two
Beuz	ances
Bos	ardy
Breq	bec
Bruque	beuf
Caude	bonne
Compain	boscq
Cor	châtel
Crique	clives
Cros	court
Dau	dalle
Écale	elle
El	eux
Étain	fleur
Har	gard
Hébé	hague
Hau	ham
Mesnil	hurs
Mont	ingy
Neuf	mesnil
Sott	nay
Tocque	ris
Toll	ron
Tonne	tot
Tour	tuit
Veules	val
Vigot	ville
Ville	vy

Here's some example resultant names:

Neufcourt
Sott-mesnil
Vigotfleur
Étainelle
Dauboscq

Suitably Normandy sounding, but perhaps needing some smoothing around the edges and some consonant shifts.


[Postscript: in writing this, I had to figure out how to add accents to text on a Mac for the first time - please don't judge me on that! Those looking to do similar for the first time, check this out: http://french.about.com/od/writing/ss/typeaccents_8.htm ]

Names for Battlesites, Villages, Cities (English naming)

Regardless of whether you are on campaign for an entire planet, passing through a small village, or having a skirmish in the suburbs of a town: places have names.  Naming the site of your battle, or roleplaying game region gives the narrative strength.

This blog has previously published some latin names for both Death Guard and Thousand Sons, but today, I wanted to tackle a method for generating some English sounding names for villages and towns that might be player in. I might try some planet names at a later date. These names are derived from places that I know, and adapted from the British toponymy wikipedia entry so as to exclude some (but by no means all!) of the more famous possibilities.

There are four elements.  Two main elements that constitute the name (element one and element two) that should be run together. There are then optional prefixes and suffixes that you're welcome to add and append to taste.

Element One	Element Two
Ash	bridge
Balla	bourne
Bell	by
Black	dale
Bright	donn
Broom	field
Burn	firth
Cross	ford
Exe	gate
Finch	haven
Frank	head
Grass	land
Hes	law
Holly	lock
Inch	mere
Ingle	mouth
Ink	pool
Kirk	rigg
Knock	stage
Lang	thwaite
New	tree
Park	toft
Peyn	ton
Pitt	vine
Shin	wall
Thorn	ward
Threl	way
Up	wood
White	worth
Win	wych

Prefixes	Suffixes & Interfixes
Castle	Court
East	Dale
Glen	Desert
Great	Bank
King's	Fields
Little	Green
Lower	Hill
Mount	Park
North	Plains
Queen's	Way
Royal	-by-the-Sea
Saint	-in-(Generate an additional two elements as above)
South	-on-(Generate an additional two elements as above)
Upper	-under-(Generate an additional two elements as above)
West	-upon-(Generate an additional two elements as above)

Try generating a few and let me know if you like it.  Here's some of mine that I generated:

Ashvine Fields
South Brighttree
Kirkgate
Finchead-under-Peynton
Winlaw

Overall, they are pleasing to my ear and certainly have that British feeling to them.

40k Legends: Marneus Calgar

Hi All, Eldrad Vect here. I'm trying a new thing this year, I thought I'd test how well the rules of some of 40k's biggest names can match up to their legendary fluff, kind of like a Mythbuster-esque thing. I don't always have conversions, battle reports, projects or other stuff, so I thought this would be a fun thing to do. First up is the God of War himself, Marneus Augustus Calgar.

Calgar has done some insane things from breaching and slaying the Tyranid Hiveship Behemoth Primus to holding the gate against waves of Orks, but there are one thing that really stands out in the fluff as a full on act. This  act is from 'The Battle of the Sepulchre' where Calgar essentially Falcon Punched an Avatar of Khaine to pieces. This event is the one I'll be proving, can Marneus Calgar slay an Avatar.

First up, the Avatar. There will be six tests, three with a basic Avatar and three with my common Avatar setup (Disarming Strike and Fast Shot). The average of each test will be used so I'll be doing some hard math... not really, just some basic calculations, also all references to Wounds mean unsaved ones.

Test one, Calgar charges the Avatar (basic). If Calgar charges into an Avatar of Khaine expect to see some terrifying results, the average wound output of the Avatar who strikes first due to Initiative is 1.3 wounds which isn't enough to kill Calgar outright so Calgar gets to fight, his average damage output is 2.1 Wounds on an Avatar this solely came down to the fact that the Avatar's Invulnerable Save is a mere 5+, so prolonged combat would definitely see Calgar slaying the Avatar. Test two, locked in combat. Locked in combat is and interesting one were both of them have the same average of 1.2 wounds so it's going to be a fist fight to the end and a long one which can swing either way. Test three, Avatar's charge. 1.6 for Calgar and 1.7 for the Avatar, what I found interesting was that the Avatar loses purely because of the Invuln. Save being so bad.
Anyway on too the real stuff, my Avatar. Test four, Calgar charges. First of all the Avatar's Disarming Strike, which 'disarms' the opposing character, rending one of the disarmed characters Close Combat Weapons (i.e. Power Fist, Lightning Claw, Force Weapon, stuff like that and even unique gear too) completely useless. The test for Disarming Strike is simple, each player rolls a dice and adds it to the character's WS if the Eldar player wins or gets the same, he chooses a weapon to nullify, if the other player wins however it's effects are negated. Also the Eldar player gets a +1 to this roll, obviously the Avatar never fails to disarm Calgar (WS10 +1 with a roll of 1 still beats WS6 with a roll of 6), so Marneus has no more Gauntlets of Ultramar. Calgar inflicts 0.4 wounds, now this means on those really lucky occasions Calgar still hurts the Avatar, on his side, the Avatar still only averages 1.3 wounds, hey that matches the first one so at least he is consistent. Test 5, Locked is Combat. Avatar's results are identical to the last 'Locked in Combat' test with an average of 1.2 wounds, however Marneus has a abysmal average 0.1 wounds! he is not going to kill the Avatar like that. Test 6, Avatar Charges. Avatar stands up with a nice 1.8 average wound ratio, in 2 out of the 10 rolls the Avatar inflicted 3 wounds on Calgar too. Calgar got a 0.2, which to be honest should also apply to the last result too, but averages are averages and he just had better luck this time around.

Final Thoughts. In all honesty Marneus Calgar is quite capable of taking down an Avatar of Khaine, as long as he is wearing his Gauntlets of Ultramar and even still the fights against my Avatar aren't really fair, not because of the dirty Disarming Strike trick but because when this fluff first came up in the codex was before Disarming Strike was even invented. Either way, it's quite possible that Calgar can kill an Avatar, it still all comes down to the luck of the dice.

Infinity Urban Ruins Bases

Infinity is not a game that I've played much of. Regardless, I have picked up some of the resin bases that are specifically designed for the game. In the image is a 40mm urban ruins resin-cast base - one of a set that I own but have not yet painted up.

The first thing that stands out about these bases is the flavour. The hexagonal tiles are moderately uncommon and will certainly give a "zing" to any miniature mounted on it. Painted well - probably with white, or off-white marble for the hexagons to contrast a darker colour in the grittier regions - these bases boast a great level of detail. This particular piece features a rifle that has been left on the ground, plus spent ammunition rounds and a small pouch. Coupled with a post-apocalyptic feel for the damage appearing on the surface, these bases make a great impact in warhammer 40k (especially Tau or anti-Tau themed armies), or other sci-fi games / roleplaying of a similar ilk.  The quality of casting is high and I can honestly recommend these bases to anyone looking for something a little bit more left-field than the regular bases.

[Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated in any way with Infinity or the resin bases that have been produced to couple with said system. I was not given these bases as a gift - I bought them in a store on a whim as a regular customer!]

Happy 40th Dungeons and Dragons!

This year sees the fortieth anniversary of the release of Dungeons and Dragons. A few people computed that last weekend was the most appropriate day to celebrate this milestone, so I missed that by a little margin.

Around the blogosphere, there have been a number of ways to commemorate this occasion. Kobold Press have interviewed a number of people involved with Dungeons and Dragons over the years to give their answers about the quirkiest things they thought existed in the game - some of the answers are probably plain to old-timers (various typos, for example, and a knowledge of other earlier products).

For my own part, I actually like the second edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons best. I think many other people regard that edition as a pinnacle of this line's roleplaying achievement, but others would point to the more modern iterations (version 3.5 is immensely popular for instance), and a DnD "NEXT" version is in the pipeline from Wizards of the Coast. The game certainly spawned a large number of emulations from other companies and a variety of controversy besides. If one googles for it, there are still cases online about how the game was linked to satanism, or how players became so decoupled from reality as to not be able to tell what was real any longer. Academic papers have even been published with this kind of stuff in.  I believe these days, most of those ideas have been largely debunked (but there is a certain resonance with the modern day graphic horror movie inspiring crimes perhaps? but don't quote me on that, that's just a gut feeling).  I would personally point to the more positive aspects of the game.

Not only does Dungeons and Dragons provide an excellent arena for friendships to blossom, but it is also a strong learning tool. Many school and college teachers now utilize roleplaying tools in their classrooms and lecture theatres (admittedly with less die rolls!) to strong effect. And in the publications themselves, the language used in the pulled no punches either. Polysyllabic words like "antithesis" crop up with frequent regularity and the reader is assumed to have a half decent education to be able to read the (oft times dense) paragraphs. It certainly widened my youthful vocabulary far more than English Literature classes would. Further, the mathematics behind some of the die rolling required a quick mind (unless gaming sessions went on for tooooo long). Ask any gamer of my generation what a THAC0 is and they will tell you in a lot of detail what it is and how it is computed.  Most times.  There were always a hard core who didn't like to think too much though: "just tell me what I need to hit the monster with!" would often be heard around the gaming table as well.

I have very fond memories of playing Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and a small host of home brew worlds with friends at high school and university that provided endless entertainment. Usually, as the DM, but sometimes as a player too. And oh: those dungeons filled with treasure and danger.  Happy memories!  I think I may have to review some of those settings in future posts on this blog as they both merit and deserve attention in many ways.

Regardless: Happy Birthday Dungeons and Dragons!  Thanks for all the fun!  Hope to have more play sessions in the future with your good or other roleplaying systems that you inspired!

A large collection

So, this post on Bell of Lost Souls has been doing the rounds lately. I'm breath-taken by the scale of it in all honestly (just like I was when I first saw an entire space marine chapter assembled and painted up).

The original post can be found here (in Korean) from Shreneo.  It has a few more pictures than the image hosting site does (I think).

What strikes me is not only the scale of this project, but also the paint work that has been undertaken. This is clearly not a shoddy paint job (maybe the plague marines need another coat yet, but that's about the worst I can say) - the eldar in particular look very impressive to me -- all authentic colours and executed with a level of detail that speaks of dedication of a high order ... and plenty of available time to undertake such an endeavour.  Tremendous!